I remember something I learned almost 40 years ago in a basic introduction to computers class i.e. G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out) & it struck me recently how relevant that is to American society today.
I have been struggling for over 30 years to connect the dots and/or simplify some of the complex issues facing us. I am a working-class guy & I have experienced or seen much of the suffering visited upon my fellow blue-collar citizens over the course of my life.
The only difference between me & most of the people I have known or met in my life is that I have an insatiable appetite for knowledge & strive to make sense of the chaos that engulfs us. Many, if not most of my family & friends over the years have dismissed my obsession & laugh at my efforts. But I continue in this lifetime goal because of my belief that each of us can make a difference.
Returning to G.I.G.O., it dawned on me that because we find ourselves now living in a “post-literate” society where many, if not most people, won’t or can’t write, & more and more people prefer texting to speaking to one another, we are facing an even greater mountain of obstacles than I had thought?
so much for the “social skills” school is supposed to teach kids
I hate to sound so doom & gloom but burying our heads in the sand won’t make the problems go away & certainly won’t save us from a possible nuclear exchange or total climate destruction.
I live in a constant state of frustration because I can’t seem to find the right words to awaken & inspire others to realizing that reading good books—challenging books like in the set of the Great Books of the Western World that was published by Encyclopedia Britannica—helps us develop our critical/analytical thinking skills.
And writing helps us to organize our thoughts & speaking to one another affirms our humanity i.e. gives us comfort & the energy to continue in the struggle to save ourselves from the destructive & greedy ones.
Tragically though, many of the so-called “best & brightest” have an almost religious devotion & belief that technology & Silicon Valley in particular, will save us. Well as I said, G.I.G.O. and if we (the working class & the technocrats) continue to cling to this delusion, we are shit out of luck!
the “social network” that is dividing us & dumbing us down
My religion (and I love saying this because I know it drives the “Christian” evangelicals/fundamentalists crazy) is humanism i.e. we got ourselves into this mess & it’s up to us, not some mythical god, to get ourselves out of it.
The “School of Athens” (Greek philosophy, the foundation of all knowledge)
I don’t know how true it is but when I hear it claimed that our average attention span is less than that of a goldfish, the more depressed I become. How can we reach people when the violence & titillation of murder, sex, destruction, greed, the end of the world, etc. preoccupies them? Oh yeah, speaking of our gold fish attention span, it gives a new meaning to that phrase; “living in a fish bowl” eh?
Moreover, when I see the absolute loyalty to Trump no matter what he does or says, it’s hard to not slip into utter despair. That craven cretin & totally despicable person even had the audacity to proclaim that he could stand on fifth avenue in New York & shoot somebody and it wouldn’t affect his supporters’ love for him. I wonder if they’d even turn a blind-eye to his inhumanity if he were to rape their 12-year-old daughter? I don’t ask this lightly but because it seems that we’ve sunk so low in terms of what is acceptable behavior & speech in this country.
his buddy Jeffrey Epstein trafficked in underage girls, Did Trump participate?
”
I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. (Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan)
Yet still there is hope & fighters like Bernie Sanders inspire hope in many of us. And despite the betrayal of the so-called liberal MSNBC & their attempts to sabotage Bernie’s campaign like the DNC did in 2016, it is possible that Bernie could pull it out. So, in that spirit, I too continue to struggle to reach people & show them some concrete tools they can use to empower themselves.
this is the Liberal channel?
A few of the “tools” that I tell people about are the Great Books which I already mentioned & which has a study guide for people interested in forming a small group to discuss/debate the Great Ideas that are central to Western Civilization as well as Eastern Civilization.
And one book in particular that a Jesuit scholar turned me onto many years ago is titled; “Problem Solving & Comprehension” by Arthur Whimbey & Jack Lochhead.” It is full of challenging problems with guides for people to work together in finding solutions so you need at least one other person to work through them together.
Continuing on, when trying to explain why people should read the more challenging books of our civilization, I use this analogy; suppose you are going to enter a foot race with the fastest kid in your school, well, you know that you are going to have to put out far more effort than you would if you knew your opponent was only a mediocre runner. In other words, the tougher the challenge, the more effort you’ll have to expend & as a result, you may not win but you’ll definitely come out stronger.
Developing our critical/analytical thinking skills is self-empowering & helps make us less vulnerable to liars & con artists like Trump.
If you’re not one of the Walking Dead, think it over?
We are at a critical point in human history & we can take the “Critical Path” that Buckminster Fuller showed us or we can continue to “Amuse Ourselves to Death” that Neil Postman warned us about & continue chuckling at the monomaniacal moron in the White House but the last laugh will be his & will be on us if we don’t get serious about saving ourselves & our planet!
Bucky Fuller known as the planet’s friendly genius & the modern day Leonardo da Vinci!
—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR Feb. 12, 2020
Addendum
I have this nagging feeling that perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I could be re: G.I.G.O. & its relevance to this critical point in history? In a nutshell, if as I argue, the information that we are fed via the “news” & the web is more & more unreliable and at the same time, we are getting dumber & dumber because of our lack of critical & analytical thinking skills and several other factors such as a habitual liar in the Oval Office, it’s becoming more important than ever that we become highly skeptical & suspicious of what we read, see, or hear on the web as well as in the news. Anybody can post on the web & if you are ruled by your emotions i.e. hot button topics like God, Guns, & Gays which the 1% know how to play like a finely tuned musical instrument to manipulate the public into voting against their own best interests, you are playing a sucker’s game. And this game isn’t a game at all, we’re talking about our lives & the sustainability of our planet that our lives depend on!
this is the truly pornographic i.e. the continuous death of war & for what?
The other day, my ex-wife got upset at some photos I had printed of some nude women. I believe these photos are excellent examples of natural beauty & are every bit as lovely as Michelangelo’s “David,” Botticelli’s “Venus on a Half Shell,” the Mona Lisa, etc. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder & so is “pornography.” The true pornography is the pornography of violence that America reveres & is awash in.
I have never bought a Penthouse magazine or Hustler, etc. because to me, they are tasteless. I have bought many copies of Playboy over the years. But what occurred to me after my ex-wife got upset & felt so offended was that the true pornography is the pornography of power & the pornography of ignorance that allows or turns a blind eye to so much of the pain, suffering, degradation, & death all around us.
Trump & his “Christian” base don’t give a damn about these innocent victims of their wars for the corporate cockroaches
First off, what I mean by the pornography of power is the obscene levels of power that we have allowed our government & transnational corporations to acquire. Time and time again they have in effect, spit in our faces. The American public in poll after poll, voted against the bailout of Wall Street but the government went ahead & bailed them out. They tell us they don’t have the money to provide health care for all of us but they keep funding these wars in Iraq & Afghanistan to the tune of a billion dollars a week.
Of course, the “other’s” suffering & death never counts when it comes to America’s “good intentions”
Our public school system has been steadily crumbling for decades & they tell us there isn’t enough money yet the weapons manufacturers & the private mercenary corporations like Blackwater are flourishing. Our infrastructure is disintegrating
Obama’s stunt in Flint revealed his betrayal & sell-out to the powers that be
while the president of vice, Dick Cheney’s corporation, Halliburton is making record profits supposedly rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, which we destroyed.
U.S. sent 363 tons of shrink-wrapped cash to Iraq & $9 billion goes missing, but, oh well?
These are but a few of the many truly pornographic or obscene acts that are going on & I wish my ex-wife and all Americans were even a fraction as outraged at these acts as those “Christian” fundamentalists are at abortion & gay marriage. It’s the pornography of ignorance that has allowed things to go so wrong for so long in this land of “freedom,” “equality,” & “democracy.” And the corporate media & the purposeful “dumbing down” of our children have deliberately spread this pornography of ignorance in our public educational system. The standards of academic or intellectual excellence have been watered down steadily over the past decades & as a result, many high school graduates aren’t even equipped to handle a minimum wage job. The paramount skills of critical & analytical thinking are taught in only a few, isolated school systems. An uninformed & unable to think clearly & rationally citizenry is easy to fool and easy to ignore.
And in Trump-land, being stupid is worn as a badge of honor
No, I’m not a ‘conspiracy nut,’ the elite have publicly declared their goals time and time again. Look up President Wilson’s statement regarding public education for a prime example of their contempt for us.
To continue, we’ve become so disengaged or psychically numbed that we don’t have sympathy or compassion for the soldiers returning from the horrors of the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. I don’t see those outraged fanatics screaming that abortion is murder, scream about the suffering & humiliation of the homeless. Many if not most of the homeless are veterans of the Vietnam War, the Gulf war, & now the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. Bumper stickers proclaim “Support Our Troops,” but this is the same shallow or simplistic jingoism as those bumper stickers commanding “America, Love It or Leave It.” If we truly supported our troops, we would house them & we would give them the best medical & psychological care available immediately. I just watched a panel of “Winter Soldiers” testify before members of Congress about the horrors of war they’d experienced in Iraq & Afghanistan and several told how they & many of their comrades turned to alcohol & drugs to escape the pain of what they’d seen & done in war and when they seek help, they are ridiculed, told they’re faking it, & put on waiting lists for up to a year or longer. Some tried to commit suicide & some succeeded.
This is the ugly truth behind the corporate cockroaches’ agenda of perpetual war
This is the true pornography and obscenity. The politicians & the military commanders turn these young, idealistic people into killers & then tell them they’re phonies or weaklings and turn their backs on them. Our soldiers are trained to dehumanize the “enemy,” in order to make the killing of the “enemy” easier to live with psychologically yet when they return to America, they are also dehumanized by the very people that told them it was their patriotic duty to go to war & defend America and her values. My family & “friends” have long told me that I’m “too sensitive,” and it has been both a blessing & a curse because I empathize with all the downtrodden of the world e.g. the working class who break their backs for a lifetime & live in a constant state of dread, despair, & pain; the scared immigrants who risk their lives to get here only to be treated like sub-humans & to be exploited by the wealthy;
Could it be that Trump & Co. doesn’t need cheap immigrant labor anymore when we have our prisoners to do the work? see A.L.E.C.
the people of countries that our military has invaded & bombed and killed & maimed their loved ones in the name of democracy & freedom. The corporate cockroaches & their lackeys in the government have duped us all.
To sum up, we should all be so outraged that we take to the streets en masse & bring business as usual to a complete standstill because it’s not until the greedy swine holding the reins of power, feel it in their bank accounts, will we begin to reclaim our dignity & honor as a people.
We need to find that spirit we had in the 1960s when we cared about one another
I’m not a religious person but when I see the picture of or an actual lovely nude woman, I feel she is a beautiful reminder of God’s handiwork just as much as those majestic Redwoods or the waves crashing on the Pacific coast. No my friend, the true pornography is that which degrades us as human beings & makes some of us do obscene things because the pain has killed that most precious gift, the human spirit!
Does this offend you more than the little Vietnamese girl burned by U.S. napalm? If so, you should look into your soul.
If we persist in our apathy & ignorance, this may come about sooner than we think, especially under Trump!
To Be or Not to Be, the haunting existential question that plagued Hamlet’s soul has now morphed into a universal nightmare stalking us all in our waking hours as well as in our nightmares. And what is the “Christian fundamentalists’” response? Celebration & thanks be to God.
Happiness is a Warm Gun
This is the beast drooling anxious to devour all that it can’t understand and thus fears: the freedom to experiment with one’s own life; the freedom to witness new sights, different voices, fumbling caresses, pungent as well as pleasant fragrances, the freedom to taste the bitter & the sweet; the liberty to explore the galaxies of one’s own mind & soul.
Any religion that demands the absolute inhibition of all that makes us human is an abomination & a blasphemy against life. It is sacrilegious to lock our souls, our spirits, our bodies in a coat of armor that cuts us off from all the life forces on this planet.
flower children
It is only through trial and error, pain and pleasure & the continual getting up again from the floor, that allows us to see our true beauty as free seekers of the divine within us like Michelangelo’s “David,” waiting within the uncarved marble.
at one with Mother Nature
These self-proclaimed “Warriors for God,” or America’s “Christian” fundamentalists have much in common with the Tea Party that had such a devastating impact on the G.O.P. several years ago & still does. As some have dubbed them i.e. the Tea Party, they are in effect, America’s Taliban. Yet because they call themselves Christians, few pay attention to their activities. This is a serious mistake on all our parts because they pose a very real threat to America’s survival and by extension, to the planet’s survival. This danger is every bit as real as the destruction we are all aware of from the Islamic fundamentalists or jihadists. And whether “Christian” fundamentalists or “Islamic” fundamentalists, they have perverted the true meaning of their religions to justify their heinous crimes against humanity.
And because I am an American, I will analyze this frightening phenomenon that has taken such strong root here in the nation that proclaims to be the home of the free & land of the brave.
The common thread that connects all fundamentalists whether they be Christian, Islamic, Jewish, or whatever, is anti-intellectualism. Let’s take a closer look, but first I want to list the main attributes of the American Tea Party which the lead character in the brilliant Aaron Sorkin’s short-lived but great series, “The Newsroom,” listed:
Ideological purity, compromise as weakness, a fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism, denying science, unmoved by facts, undeterred by new information, a hostile fear of progress, a demonization of education, a need to control women’s bodies, severe xenophobia, tribal mentality, intolerance of dissent, & a pathological hatred of the U.S. government.
If he’s your idea of greatness, you’ve set a very low bar
I wanted to list these attributes of the Tea Party because they are basically the same for the so-called, American “Christian” fundamentalists. I can’t help but wonder if perhaps Sorkin referred to the Tea Party instead of the “Christian” fundamentalists because that would’ve been too hot of a button to push with these crazies? To be honest with you my friend, I sure wish all these nut-jobs would just go off to some deserted island to live together since they hate all of us so much. But we aren’t so lucky and they are determined to make all our lives a living Hell in their religious zealotry to either convert us or kill us in the name of their “loving” God.
Onward Christian soldiers leading us to Armageddon
Some refer to this as a “culture war,” but I feel that is much too benign a term. These people are dead serious & truly feel themselves & everything they believe in is under attack. Yeah, they are the aggressors but they like to portray themselves as the helpless victims. The more extreme among them believe it’s okay to murder doctors who perform abortions & physically assault women who seek an abortion. Yep! They yearn for the good, old days when girls & women were forced to seek out some back-alley butcher who often botched the job so badly that women bled to death or were unable to ever have children in the future should they want to.
“Christian” hypocrisy on full display
As mentioned above, these Neanderthals have a hostile fear of progress & for them, progress is anything that contradicts their childish beliefs or differs from them. This is why I suggest that if you consider their belief system as a whole, it boils down to a vicious anti-intellectualism. And because anti-intellectualism is the key to understanding where these dangerous people are coming from, let me share with you, what it is.
another lovely example of “Christian” anti-intellectualism (the Spanish Inquisition)
I can’t remember where I heard it but many years ago, I read something to the effect that anyone who reads at or is educated beyond the fifth or sixth grade is considered suspect. This is a good place to start because it reveals the absurdity of the basic tenets of anti-intellectualism. It obviously hasn’t dawned on them that just about everything they use in their daily lives, was invented by people educated far beyond the sixth grade i.e. cars, planes, televisions, computers, medicines, etc. etc. etc.
Moreover, there is a deeply ingrained distrust of all things intellectual as just useless banter amongst the aristocrats. Again, they reveal their ignorance & don’t consider our Constitution as anything special either. For these mental midgets, there is only one book worthy of study, do I need to tell you what that book is? If you want to have a bit of fun, try telling one of these holy-rollers that their Christianity owes a huge debt to Plato’s philosophy but be ready, because they might physically assault you. Personally, I have a lot more respect for Jesuits because at least they spent their lives in serious, scholarly pursuits to be able to back up their beliefs. It’s far easier of course to just reject what you haven’t even bothered to try to wrestle with intellectually. And this is why I say that they’re not only morally bankrupt, they’re intellectual cowards & mental weaklings as well.
The real witch-hunt is by Trump & his “Christians”
This brings me to one of my pet peeves about these people so arrogant in their willful ignorance that it causes my blood to boil. Conservatively, over the past 30 years roughly, I have spent at least 49,000 hours in serious pursuit of knowledge and wisdom yet some of these airheads have the audacity to dismiss all my blood, sweat, & tears from my efforts with trite comments like; Well, I know better because God told me so. Such breathtakingly spectacular stupidity is simply beyond belief yet they smugly stroll down the street absolutely sure they have the truth & I’m the deluded one.
don’t forget how “Christians” converted Native Americans & Pacific Islanders almost to complete genocide
You see, one of the things that is beyond their comprehension is what’s called the paradox of learning i.e. the more your knowledge expands, the more you become aware of just how little you know & how much more knowledge, wisdom, and truth there is for us to learn. The feeble-minded think that the more you learn, the more confident you should become & they can’t comprehend that it’s only through our humility that we grow intellectually. You’d think they’d be able to grasp this since Jesus often speaks about the need for our humbleness.
Asimov wrote over 500 books & inspired many to become scientists, biologists, chemists, etc.
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” —Isaac Asimov (this is Trump & his followers in spades!)
Inversely or conversely, this is precisely why it’s so hard to reach these people on a rational level i.e. the more ignorant they are, the greater their walls of ignorance & superstition that surrounds them. And the more ignorant people are, the easier it is for unscrupulous charlatans to manipulate them. Just consider the many televangelists who ripped their congregations off & lived like jet-setters while screwing prostitutes, living in mansions, etc. like Jim & Tammy Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson who is supposedly worth $100 million. Yep, this is clear evidence of just how stupid people can be in that they’ll give their hard-earned money to these scum who swear that the Lord speaks to them & tells them that their congregations should give them their money because they’re doing the Lord’s work.
Jim Bakker was sent to prison but he’s out & back at it again (“Christian” fundamentalists ignorance knows no limits)
Undeniably, we are at an extremely critical juncture in not only our country’s history but in the history of the world because Donald Trump is sitting in the oval office. I argue this point for several reasons which I’ll soon get into but firstly because Trump has coincidentally become a born-again Christian just a few months before he started his campaign to become president. So, here we can see prima facie evidence of not only how dumb these “Christians” are for believing Trump is a Christian but also just how shallow their beliefs, values, & principles are.
“Christian” values on display for all the world to see
Trump can openly brag on national television that he gets away with grabbing women by their pussies & that he has walked right into beauty pageant contestants’ dressing rooms many times so he could see them naked or semi-nude. He committed adultery many times, lies & cheats his employees, is racist, has manipulated banks & local politicians to get his casinos built but when they failed, he walks away denying responsibility, etc. etc. etc. He is perhaps the vilest person to ever serve as our president & there isn’t a Christian bone in his body but his fan club doesn’t care because he claims to be their champion. And Mike Pence sits behind him like the Cheshire Cat just smugly waiting for his chance to take over and really implement their agenda of oppression against all of us who don’t believe in their hypocritical religiosity.
a man of integrity? Yeah, right!
The fact that millions of these faux Christians so passionately proclaim Trump their hero quite frankly, scares the Hell out of me! History is replete with examples of insane & outrageous leaders who were adept at public speaking & the psychological manipulation of their citizens, Hitler is the first example that comes to mind in this regard. And just as in pre-Nazi Germany, most of their citizens dismissed him as a nutcase who would never mount to anything. Trump has clearly revealed his fondness for authoritarians & dictators and harbors grand illusions of becoming our “strong-man.”
Jim Jones was very charismatic also, that is, right up till they drank the kool-aid
He openly flouts not only the social norms for our presidents i.e. putting his financial interests aside while president, showing an interest in the workings of our government by reading his daily briefings, etc. He shows no intellectual curiosity whatsoever & spends his days like the typical teenager watching television & tweeting. To think that this vile, profane buffoon has the codes to our nuclear weapons is a horrific nightmare. But again, his “Christian” base isn’t worried because they welcome the end of the world & can’t wait to see God. If only they’d all go again to some deserted island and commit suicide & leave the rest of us alone who enjoy living.
Trump and his born -again baboons share a mutual distrust & hatred of intellectuals. For Trump, his hatred of intellectuals is bound-up with the personal rejection he received from New York’s cultural elite as a young man trying to make a name for himself. And something occurred to me the other day regarding this matter, for some reason, in our educational system, we stop teaching students how to read once they’ve reached the fourth grade basically. And those who haven’t mastered the skills of reading proficiently by fourth grade start a gradual downhill slope from there on. After third grade, reading is the core skill necessary for all other learning & my guess is that Donald was one of those who didn’t master reading by fourth grade and he has been covering-up this fact all his life?
This would go a long way in terms of explaining Trump’s open hostility towards those he considers elitists i.e. anyone who criticizes him or shows him to be an ignorant fool. Moreover, it also shows why he is so fond of tyrants i.e. you can silence your critics by jailing them or having them killed if you’re an authoritarian say like Duterte in the Philippines who tells his police & military to simply shoot anyone they suspect of being a drug trafficker. Trump’s ego is so fragile that he crumbles each & every time someone makes fun of him, especially on the national scene. But his loyal “Christians,” and his racist, Neo-Nazi fan club buoy his spirits so he loves putting on his rallies as if he were still running for the office of which he holds.
how blind can people be???
Besides the very real threat to our survival as a species posed by this man-child, would be king with his finger on the nuclear trigger is the equally real danger our planet is facing from climate destruction. Of course, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan, like his fellow “Christian” Klansmen, doesn’t give a shit about our dying planet because his pea-brain can only think in terms of instant gratification like the next Big Mac. He and his fellow cretins live only for today & could care less about their or our future. Shows how much they love their children & their grandchildren, doesn’t it? And I guess they don’t care that there will soon be no places left to go camping with their families, sailing on their yachts, etc. Yep! Just one living Hell right here on earth. But why do we all have to pay for their greed & ignorance? Well obviously, if we don’t want to see this nightmare come true, we need to get off our couches & turn off the sports drug programs and get out in the streets protesting against our common destruction & for a livable planet.
In conclusion, I just read a short article titled; “Donald Trump’s revolution against America’s intellectuals.” I thought it would be interesting & relevant to this essay that I’m writing but I have to call Bull-shit on its author! In brief, he posits the familiar claim that Trump won because people are tired of being “politically correct” and mocked for being dumb or called stupid. He goes on to state that many intellectuals are Jewish and that intellectuals in general are an arrogant clique or caste so-to-speak. Well duh! If you’ve spent your life in scholarly pursuits, wouldn’t you want to hang-out with other scholars so you can share & compare thoughts?
I have the misfortune of being from a poor, working-class, single parent family but I have spent my life educating myself. And my fate is that when I hang out at the local pub, I am not allowed to speak about politics because of the social taboo against it in this land of freedom & democracy. Yet, sometimes I can get away with speaking about these serious matters and I have seen the light come on in people’s eyes. Some have told me that our conversation was the best they’ve had in years. I believe most people are hungry for knowledge but yes, we, who are better educated need to be sensitive to people’s feelings and not make them feel like they’re being talked down to.
Should she be forced to be silent as well?
But for this author to argue that this resentment justifies the silencing of America’s intellectuals is a perverse turning of the table i.e. we’re supposed to keep our mouths shut and let the racists spew their bile? Fuck that! I am not a Christian but I know a thing or two and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount summed it up nicely.
True Christianity in a nut-shell
We are to care for the oppressed, the hungry, etc., not threaten them & ignore them. What Trump and his fellow “Christians,” conveniently overlook is the fact that the greatest welfare cheats are the “Defense contractors” who are draining our national treasury. Yeah, it’s much easier to beat-up on the poor who have been screwed every which way possible. So, for these blind zealots for Trump, your belief that he is your savior shows how monumentally stupid you are because he gave the obscenely wealthy, like himself, another massive tax break while sticking it to you rubes!
The “Defense Contractors” are the true Welfare Queens!The darkest days of my life until I lost my wife
Finally, this anti-intellectualism seems to boil down to a basic inferiority complex on the part of all those who feel dumb. When I was in my early 20s and went to Europe for the first time—and before you say; “Aha! Another elitist” yeah, right. I slept on park benches, went hungry for three days, dug ditches, moved furniture, etc. —but I met a young guy who knew more about American history, literature, politics, philosophy, etc. but he wasn’t arrogant about it. I picked his brain so-to-speak and asked him about books & authors I should check out and that was my intellectual awakening. You see, the more common reaction when people meet someone they sense is smarter than they are, is to reject them by either mocking them or walking away. So again, if you feel stupid, that’s a clue that you have work to do and you should be happy because you know what to do & the more you learn, the better you’ll feel about yourself. It only took me 14 years to earn my B.A. in English literature which normally takes four years to complete but I was born on the wrong side of the tracks and wouldn’t have it any other way. And it tasted so sweet proving all my “friends” and family members wrong who had labeled me a quitter and a loser!
We are gradually morphing into a fascist society, yep, right here in the land of freedom & democracy. Fear mongering, exaggeration, being an alarmist, you say? A third of the American public believe that Trump is the populist champion of their dreams & he uses these tactics and many more and they believe him yet the majority of them most likely would dismiss my argument here? Okay, for those of you who are still able & willing to read an essay that’ll require 15 minutes of your time, here’s an overview of the subject for you.
It Can’t Happen Here, Right???
Most people are aware of the fact that Freud was the father of modern psychology but did you know that his nephew, Edward Bernays, was the father of the public relations industry or as we usually refer to it, the PR industry? There’s an old saying, “Advertising is what you pay for & Publicity is what you pray for.” Well Bernays soon became the darling of New York’s elite circle of businessmen because of his skillful use of his uncle’s insights into human behavior in his P.R. campaigns for many, if not most of the major corporations of his time. (by-the-way, Bernays published a book in 1928, its title was “Propaganda.”)
And to give you an example of just how pernicious & powerful the P.R. industry became, let’s take a look at how he helped to make it acceptable for women to smoke cigarettes. Before this PR assault on America, it was considered a social taboo for women to smoke;
After WWI, Bernays was hired by the American Tobacco Company to encourage women to start smoking. While men smoked cigarettes, it was not publicly acceptable for women to smoke. Bernays staged a dramatic public display of women smoking during the Easter Day Parade in New York City. He then told the press to expect that women suffragists would light up “torches of freedom” during the parade to show they were equal to men. Like the “You’ve come a long way, baby” ads, this campaign commodified women’s progress and desire to be considered equal to men
Evidently, Bernays had stumbled upon the golden formula that generated millions in profits for the corporate cockroach class i.e. employing psychological appeals in their advertising & P.R. campaigns. By manipulating peoples’ fears & desires, corporations could sell their products that people didn’t need & condition them to want or desire the products which would serve as symbols of their elevated class status & thereby enhance their self-image. Need I illustrate? Look at all the car ads that show beautiful women flocking around a guy in a fancy sports car for example.
tell me again how different we are from Russia?
Well, as the 20th century rolled on, so did the power of corporations until the point we’re at today where these corporations are more powerful (in terms of wealth & influence) than many nations;
Walmart
Exxon Mobil
Royal Dutch Shell
Apple
Samsung
Amazon
Microsoft
Nestle
Google
And this is just a partial list. Let this sink in for a minute if you will? Private corporations so rich & powerful that they hire armies of lobbyists to seduce politicians into writing legislation that further increases their profits, protects them from lawsuits, provides them with millions & billions in tax subsidies for research & development, allows them to use the public infrastructure (highways, bridges, ports, airports, etc.) to conduct their business and most of these behemoth corporations pay little to no taxes—some even get back millions & billions in their tax returns.
What did our soldiers die for???
If this doesn’t morally outrage you, you are either a member of the corporate cockroach class or are a sociopathic narcissist like Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan. By-the-way, Donny is a great admirer of authoritarians & dictators in case you haven’t noticed; (Saddam Hussein, Putin, Kim Jong Un of N. Korea, Mussolini, Gadhafi, 1980s Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping of China, Duterte of the Philippines, President Erdogan of Turkey, Egyptian President el-Sisi, the Saudis, & Brazil’s new president, Boisonaro. And Trump not only admires these murderous authoritarians & dictators, he envies them & wishes he could be America’s authoritarian like the role he played on The Apprentice “reality” T.V. program. Note; Trump insisted that as part of his contract with the producers of that absurd show that every time his name was mentioned on the show, they had to also say that he was a billionaire. Talk about manipulating his public image, are you beginning to take my point?
So this is defending freedom & democracy?
Moreover, speaking of Trump’s admiration of Mussolini, some have credited Mussolini with saying;
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
I know how die-hard most of Trump’s “base” is but I am a proudly stubborn (determination undisciplined) Irishman & I don’t give up easily either so here’s a sampling of the mountain of evidence proving Trump a malignant, greedy, megalomaniac:
*Trump consistently attacks peoples’ characters when he can’t refute their argument
*he’s a non-stop braggart i.e. I’m the smartest, I’m the best, I’m the greatest negotiator, etc. etc. etc.
*his biggest lie is his wealth & that’s why he will never reveal his tax returns
*he’s intentionally vague so he can deny having said what he’s said because his words are often open to a variety of interpretations
*he’s been exaggerating his wealth, his popularity, his skills, etc. his entire life
*he minimizes others so he can exaggerate his own significance
*he is fond of making false equivalences
*he likes to use the lesser of two evils argument (which is bogus)
*repetition ad nauseam is one of his favorite deceptive tactics i.e. I am the most famous president ever, the most successful real estate developer in New York City, etc. etc. etc.
*Scapegoating was his lead-off in his presidential campaign i.e. Mexicans are rapists, murderers, etc. & he blames everyone except himself for everything that doesn’t go his way
*Emotional Appeals—a favorite tactic used by dictators throughout history i.e. Hitler’s constant claim that the Jews were behind all of Germany’s problems (using fear, guilt, & calls for loyalty to him)
*Bandwagon—everyone else is doing it, so why not me or we
*Black & White/Either-Or; it’s us against the democrats
Burden of Proof—trying to turn the tables & demand his accusers prove their credibility rather than answer a question
*false flattery—try to flatter your opponent to keep them from attacking you
*Incredulity—I am offended that you would even ask me such a question
*labeling—any journalist who criticizes him or disagrees with him is with the “fake press”
*Ridicule/Mocking—his shameful mocking of handicapped guy during one of his rallies
*slippery slope—if we don’t stop the illegal immigrants, we’ll soon be overrun by terrorists, etc.
*Dehumanizing—something Trump has a particular talent for especially when it comes to anyone who dares to say a bad word about him
*Slogans—replacement for serious thought i.e. America, love it or leave it
I could easily provide you with hundreds if not thousands of examples of Trump’s manipulative techniques/tactics but I realize that no matter how much proof I provide, Trump supporters aren’t open to logic or rational thought but are ruled by their passions & Trump is a master at pushing peoples’ emotional buttons in order to win them over. So, why should I waste my time talking to the willfully ignorant or rather trying to persuade them to reflect & trust their own judgment rather than the circus master Trump the Vile?
Trump as Jim Jones & the kind of loyalty Trump expects
I am providing a public service that some may seriously consider or may pass it on to some of those who haven’t drunk the Jim Jones Kool Aid yet, and that is my only solace. And in that spirit, here are the eight signs of malignant narcissism, and if you dare, see if any of them are accurate reflections of Donald the psychopathic narcissist:
Sense of entitlement
Lack of conscience and empathy
Sadistic streak
Egocentrism
Grandiosity (I am the greatest, smartest, richest, etc.)
Paranoia (it’s a witch hunt by the democrats)
Manipulative nature
They project their bad behavior onto others
In conclusion and to prove that this isn’t merely a one-sided attack on “republicans,” Obama bears a large part of the responsibility for Trump becoming president. In fact, Obama was so good at his “bait & switch” tactic that he used on us to persuade us that he was going to be the champion of “Hope & Change,” that his campaign for his first term as president won two awards at the Cannes Festival for Advertising:
“The campaign that drove Barack Obama to victory in the US presidential election has claimed two top awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards.
The campaign, submitted by Obama for America, has been hailed as a masterful combination of new media, door-to-door and community grass roots campaigning with a clever tactical use of traditional TV advertising.
The campaign won two grands prix in the Titanium and Integrated Lions categories.”
Yep! Obama swore up & down and everywhere he went that he was going to enact real changes, be the transparent president, etc. and what did he do within the first few weeks of his presidency? He appointed several of the top Wall St. wolves to the most powerful positions regarding our national economy i.e. Summers, Geitner, Bernanke, etc. And right then & there I knew I had been suckered just like the millions of other Americans. I detested all the racial attacks on him & Trump barely concealed his own racist campaign against Obama with his “birther” issue which he beat the drums for ad nauseam. But Obama’s refusal to prosecute the Wall St. culprits, the “Super Bankers” who were “Too Big to Fail & Too Big to Jail,” his war on Whistleblowers, etc. etc. etc. only fanned the flames of anger in America which should rightfully be directed at the corporate cockroach class because the politicians are merely the willing tools of these creatures who have no loyalty to America whatsoever. Look into how Obama sold out the residents of Flint with stunt pretending the water was safe to drink. Obama the Oreo President!
And Trump with his appeal to peoples’ fears and hate using his racism, bigotry, & the other techniques I listed above, managed to slink into the oval office. I recently permanently deleted my Facebook account for several reasons but a significant factor was that every time I criticized Obama, many so-called Progressives came unglued and practically accused me of being a. troll for Trump. Yep! A sad reflection of the myopia on the Left that just like the so-called conservatives who are blind to the crimes of their party, are willfully blind to the crimes & betrayals of the democratic party.
Lastly, what should really worry us all is what my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky has been warning us about for quite some time now i.e. the catastrophic, perhaps already irreversible destruction of our climate or environment. Exxon Mobil & several of the other oil & natural gas conglomerates have spent millions, perhaps billions pushing their fake news sowing the seeds of doubt about climate change. Of course, Donald Duck is doing his part by claiming it’s all an elaborate Chinese hoax. In this Alice in Wonderland World where Trump is the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, and can start a nuclear war in a childish fit which he is notorious for, we should all be quaking in our boots!
May we persevere!
Rob DeLoss, Trinidad, CA 1/28/19
P.S. It must be a sign of old age but I forgot some juicy tidbits regarding Trump that I want to include. Trump’s supposed War against the “Fake News Media” would be laughable if it weren’t so destructive of a vital institution in any democracy. Moreover, where would Trump be if it weren’t for all the free media coverage he received in his campaign for the presidency—some estimate over $5 billion while Bernie got a tiny fraction of coverage. Trump learned from his slimy mentor, Roy Cohn, that any media attention i.e. publicity is good whether it’s scandalous or not because it keeps you in the public eye. Cohn’s “wisdom” which Trump assimilated into his very DNA was “to always hit back & never apologize.” You see, Trump’s “brand” is his most prized possession because he sells his brand i.e. logo, all around the world & people pay him millions to use his logo. Sadly, far too many Trump supporters believe that everything that has Trump’s name on it, is owned by him. And once again we witness just how destructive advertising & public relations can be.
Addendum
Oh yeah, another minor little detail i.e. our government launches P.R. campaigns to “motivate” us to go into wars. The Iraq War is one of the most blatant campaigns of lies to date. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al spent weeks & months going on the Sunday morning talk shows warning us what a threat to our freedom & democracy the Iraqis were, how they had weapons of mass destruction, etc. and it was all proven to be a grand conspiracy of lies afterwards but not a single one of these war criminals was held accountable. In fact, Cheney got rich off the war because his stock in Halliburton went through the roof because they just “coincidentally” were awarded the lion’s shares of the contracts for supplying our troops & rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure but neglected to do most of what they got paid for. And oh yeah, billions of dollars went missing, but what the hell? Moreover, the New York Times, the supposed bastion of liberal thought in America, beat the war drums every bit as loudly as FOX “News.” So, to some extent, Trump is right about the fake news of several of our “news outlets” but he clearly uses this label in his pathetic attempts to silence all his critics. Let’s see, officially we lost 4,486 military personnel & 32,226 casualties but if you dig deeper you’ll discover that our casualties are much closer to half a million if you count PTSD, depression, heart & breathing problems, etc. etc. etc.
And can you tell me again why we’ve been in Afghanistan now longer than any other war in U.S. history? Well, as Calvin Coolidge said, “the business of America is business.” Or to put it more bluntly, Welcome to Amerika, where the Corporate Cockroaches Rule!
